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The Smart City Paradigm in India: Issues and Challenges of Sustainability and Inclusiveness
Author(s): Souvanic Roy
Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 44, No. 5/6 (May–June 2016), pp. 29-48
Published by: Social Scientist
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24890283
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The Smart City Paradigm in India:
Issues and Challenges of
Sustainability and Inclusiveness
Sou van ic Roy
Introduction
Immediately after assuming power in May 2014, the National Democratic
Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
decided to set up '100 Smart Cities' throughout the country. With the
contribution of urban India to the national GDP estimated at 75 per cent
during 2030, the Smart Cities are expected to be engines of economic
growth. The budget speech of the Finance Minister in July 2014 men
tioned that the aspirations of the neo-middle class towards better living
standards are to be achieved by developing Smart Cities as satellite towns
for larger cities and by modernising existing mid-size cities. According to
the draft concept-note prepared by the Ministry of Urban Development
(MoUD), Government of India, they will comprise 9 satellite cities with a
population of 4 million or more, 44 cities in the population range of 1—4
million, 17 state/Union Territory (UT) capitals, 10 cities of tourist and reli
gious importance, and 20 cities in the population range of 0.5 to 1 million
(MoUD 2014: 21-22). The focus will be on the development of high-end
infrastructure and technology-enabled governance, with the objectives of
accomplishing competitive, investor-friendly and world-class entities. The
concept-note indicates the three cardinal principles for Smart Cities as:
competitiveness, quality of life and sustainability.
The concept of a 'Smart City' has become popular in the policy arena of
the European Union (EU) and other developed countries. The Smart Cities
Readiness Guide of the Smart Cities Council, an advocacy group of industry
houses, defines a Smart City as one that uses 'information and communi
cations technology (ICT), to enhance its livability, workability and sus
tainability' (Smart Cities Council 2013: 5). It identifies the seven drivers of
Smart City development as: (a) increasing urbanisation with the addition
of 700 million to the urban population over the next decade; (b) growing
stress due to unemployment, crowding, inadequate housing; (c) demand
and supply gap in infrastructure; (d) economic competition among cities
to secure investments; (e) rising expectation of citizens towards world
class education, health care, recreation and a responsive government; (f)
growing environmental challenges related to carbon emission and global
warming; and (g) expanding technology options in the areas of ICT, elec
tronics and telecommunication, energy, water and waste management.
The 'Internet of Things' (IOT) has become a major building block of the
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Smart Cities. The Guide highlights a reported increase in IOT devices by

technology provider Cisco, from 200 million in 2010 to 10 billion in the
year 2012. Based on evidence from the literature (Amin et al. 2000; Brenner
and Theodore 2002; Florida 2005; Graham and Marvin 2001; Harvey 1989;
Komninos 2002), Holland (2008) identifies five prime characteristics of a
Smart City as: embedding of ICT into the city fabric, emphasis on busi
ness-led development and domination of neo-liberal urban spaces, shift in
urban governance from managerial to entrepreneurial forms, significance
of social learning and education, social capital for innovation, the nurtur
ing of a creative class, and focus on social and environmental sustainabil
ity. Citing the examples of Ottawa, Singapore, San Diego and Sao Paolo,
Holland argues that the characteristics of smart urbanism have led to con
flicts between promoting global, mobile IT businesses and serving station
ary, ordinary citizens; patronising the elite creative class and sustaining the
unskilled IT illiterate urban poor; top-down corporate-driven governance
and bottom-up decentralised urban management. He further opines that
the urban form of Smart Cities, led by business-driven technology and
gentrification, has been unconcerned about the issues of class inequality,
polarisation, social justice and inclusion.
In India, a section of industry and civil society welcomed the idea as
they rightly consider the Indian urban scene as anything but smart, with
obsolete and inconsistent data, crumbling infrastructure, unaccountable
city governance and lack of financial resources. A city with a mission of
quality living, characterised by state-of-the-art infrastructure, a high-speed
mass transit system, a pollution-free environment, energy efficiency and
transparent governance through the application of ICT, is expected to uplift
livability to the level of world-class cities in the West. Moreover, the pri
vate sector investment in ICT and other infrastructure, real estate, energy,
health care and education will bring in efficiency, intelligence and quality
in the socio-economic, physical and institutional environment in the cities.
On the contrary, critics raise the issue of diversity of the country, in terms
of its people, economies and geographies. They argue that ICT applications
and the cost recovery of service delivery would increase the cost of living of
the urban poor, who may then be pushed further to the peripheries of cities
and endure a renewed onslaught on their lives and livelihoods.
The Purpose and Content of the Smart City Initiative and

Challenges for Sustainability and Indusiveness
Soderstrom et al. (2014) pointed out the theoretical underpinning of the
concept of the Smart City, particularly the New Urbanism movement in
the USA during the 1980s and the concept of a technology-based intelligent
city. Between 1994 and 1997, the city of Multifunction Polis near Adelaide
in Australia and two cities in Malayasia - Cyberjaya and Putrajaya - were
planned as Smart Cities using ICT to attract investments and automa
The Smart City Paradigm in India
tise the service delivery arrangements. In early 2000, the other issue that
became instrumental in the popularisation of the idea of the Smart City was
the proactive role of private sector companies, namely IBM, in developing
software and consultancy services for urban instrumentation, to monitor
real-time information of the cities in order to improve their operational
efficiencies. The 'Intelligent Operations Centre' in Rio de Janeiro - a part
nership between the Municipality and IBM - has developed a city-level
instrumentation system through sensors and camera networks, drawing
data from thirty line agencies engaged in the provision of urban services,
weather monitoring, gathering information from citizens through mobile
phones and the internet into a state-of-the-art analytic centre. It analyses
high volume, diverse and real-time data to investigate the state of affairs in
the city and predict scenarios of development and management, e.g. traffic
bottleneck, flooding, rubbish bins sending an alarm as they are close to
being full, impending health risks and so on.
Encouraged by the success of Rio and subsequently Singapore, IBM
has developed the following two-pronged strategy to dominate the rising
market of the Smart City; full-scale contracting for the city government
(McNeill 2013) and consultations to 100 Municipalities across different
countries as part of its Smarter Cities Challenge Programme. With the
declared objectives of operational efficiency in governance and the devel
opment of a knowledge economy, currently the major players such as
IBM, CISCO, Microsoft, Intel, AT&T and Master Card are pushing for the
adoption of new urban technologies and services by cities, and are simul
taneously advocating for deregulation and privatisation to ensure capital
accumulation. The validity of the technocratic mode of governance, and
the limitations of ICT and an automation-based knowledge economy in
generating jobs for millions flocking to the cities, have been questioned
in the available literature. Kitchin (2013) observed that a large number of
self-designated Smart Cities fail to incorporate the attributes of culture,
politics, policy and governance, and that a technological solution alone is
not capable of addressing the deep-rooted structural malaise inextricably
linked to their social dynamics. Marvin and Luque (2013) highlighted that
selected proprietary technologies developed by the world's largest software
services and hardware companies would focus on ensuring monopoly in
the potential market, as opposed to larger societal or environmental pri
orities, either in the greenfield ventures (e.g. Songdo in South Korea or
Masdar in UAE) or the retrofitting of existing cities. IBM is presently selling
its product called 'Intelligent Operations Centre' that combines the features
originally designed for Rio into a single product, applicable to any city.
The Indian version of Smart Cities started with the announcement
of the building of seven such cities in six states, each with a population
of two million, along the proposed Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor
(DMIC), by the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance (UPA) govern
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ment in 2007. The city clusters include Dadri-Noida-Ghaziabad in Uttar

Pradesh, Khuskehra-Bhiwadi-Neemrana in Rajasthan, Maneswar-Bawal
in Haryana, Ahmedabad-Dholera in Gujarat, Pithampur-Dhar-Mhow in
Madhya Pradesh, and Dighi in Maharasthra (D'Monte 2014). These were
envisaged primarily as greenfield industrial cities with world-class infra
structure and ICT. Similar to the concept of the developed world, high-end
infrastructure, sensors, smart grids, big data and analytics have been con
sidered as the elementary instruments for urban governance. The former
Chief Minister of Gujarat, Mr Narendra Modi, had declared two Smart
Cities: Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR) and Gujarat International
Finance Tec (GIFT) City, as the building blocks of a global Gujarat (Datta
2014). On assuming power in Delhi, the Modi government launched the
ambitious initiative of 'Make in India' to facilitate the entry of private
investment and innovation in order to build international-quality manufac
turing infrastructure. The Smart City has been conceived as an instrument
to invite global funding agencies, technology firms and private (domestic
and international) real estate, to help realise the dream of 'Make in India'.
The number of cities on the DMIC corridor is proposed to be increased
to twenty-four, in addition to several new cities along the Chennai-Bangalore
Industrial Corridor (CBIC) and the Bangalore- Mumbai Economic
Corridor (BMEC). These corridors and Smart Cities are expected to be
developed with the help of funding and expertise of the Japan International
Cooperation Agency (JAICA), the UK, France and Singapore. IBM has pre
pared the ICT Master Plan for Dighi Port Industrial Area in the DMIC, with
a proposal for setting up a Rio-like Intelligent Operations Centre patented
by IBM. CISCO prepared the ICT Master Plan for four Smart Cities in the
DMIC project and entered into a collaboration with the Electronic City
Industrial Association (ELCIA) to set up an IOT hub to house companies
for developing software to be used in 100 Smart Cities (Idiculla 2014). The
US-India Business Council expressed the willingness of US companies to
contribute capital and global expertise in developing solutions for such cit
ies, and possible financing instruments including debt markets, public-pri
vate partnerships (PPP), equity investments and other innovative business
models (US India Business Council 2014:2). The PPP opportunities for US
companies may be explored in the areas of transportation infrastructure,
power, slum development, sanitation, sewage and water. In conformity
with the envisaged business model, most of these proposed Smart Cities
are being, or are likely to be, designated as Special Economic Zones (SEZs)
or SIRs, to attract foreign and private capital by offering exemptions from
taxes, duties, labour laws and by bending rules to ensure easy access to
cheap land. Efforts have already been initiated through the recent Land
Acquisition Ordinance 2015, to dilute the provisions of the present Act in
order to ensure state expropriation of agricultural land for the industrial
corridor, infrastructure and real estate development under the holy tag
of 'public purpose'. The blueprint for the displacement of people from

5,000 villages for the DMIC alignment and construction of Smart Cities
has already been prepared (Hasan 2015: 4). Recendy, the government has
announced the setting up of twelve Smart Cities in port lands with desig
nated SEZs, which will be implemented through the PPP model ( The Hindu
2015). The government has reduced the cap on foreign direct investment
(FDI) in real estate from 50,000 sq. m to 20,000 sq. m, and the investment
limit from $10 million to $5 million, to further relax the regulatory barrier.
Several issues regarding sustainability and inclusiveness have been
raised in academic and policy advocacy circles, on the objectives, content
and possible outcome of such cities in India (Burte 2014; Chatterjee 2014;
Bhatia 2014; Ghosh 2015; Puri 2014). First, the proposed alignments of
DMIC, CBIC and BMEC, and the development of Smart Cities along
these corridors will further reinforce the uneven and polarised urbanisa
tion in the country. Presendy, the states of Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra
and Karnataka have a higher rate of urbanisation and per-capita income
than the majority of the eastern and central states. The proposed indus
trial corridors and the Smart Cities will worsen the existing west-east
divide in this regard. Second, cities in the Western countries, Singapore
and China have been adopted as the role models for smart urbanisation
in India, disregarding the contrast in socio-political contexts and institu
tional capabilities. Third, questions have been raised about the relevance
of computer and mobile-aided living, working, banking and utility pro
vision in a so-called Smart City, where large sections of dispossessed and
homeless communities coexist without formal employment. There is a
large possibility that the technocentric governance of Smart Cities may
further push the urban poor to the margins of cities. Fourth, the centra
lised data system might be able to forecast urban flooding or anticipate
disease outbreaks and other emergencies, but the decision to mobilise
resources and prioritisation of localities for intervention will be decided
by politics dominated by the ruling elite. Fifth, the initiative has an ambi
tious objective of creating transit-oriented, walkable, cyclist-inclusive,
livable cities, but in reality, the rising number of personal car ownership
and private enclave urbanisation during the last two decades have created
a marked polarisation based on class, caste, social hierarchy and profes
sional position. Cities have significantly lost their shared character and
with the phenomenal participation of the private sector, as envisaged in
the Smart City initiative, they are likely to be converted into a breeding
ground of crony capitalism. Sixth, Smart Cities make a lofty claim of envi
ronmental sustainability in their siting and operation. Contrary to this
objective, Dholera SIR in Gujarat, the city proposed on the DMIC align
ment, located in a flood-prone zone, appears to be an expensive venture
in terms of site development. There may be several such locations selected
in other states through a top-down and bureaucratic process.
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)£ In India's Smart Cities, emerging technology features, namely, sensors,

° cameras, wireless devices, data centres and analytical engines, are expected
o to ensure efficient urban services, a low ecological footprint, reduced car
.2, bon emission and maximised entrepreneurial opportunities for the citizens.
>j» However, looking at cities purely through the lens of technology, in terms of
Z investment destination and knowledge economy, implies a failure to inter
^ prêt the aspirations and socio-political relations of multiple stakeholders
J, with competing interests that are engaged in the shaping of Indian cities,
g The primary aim of the Smart City, as envisaged in the draft con
2 cept-note, is to achieve competitiveness in order to attract investment and
( operational efficiency in service delivery, through the pillars of institutional,
physical, social and economic infrastructure. Institutional infrastructure
^5 seeks to address the fragmented nature of service delivery across multiple

institutions, achieve e-governance and citizen participation through social
media and other mechanisms. Physical infrastructure emphasises a high
level of urban mobility, intelligent and ubiquitous availability of urban
services, including ICT services and digital technologies mentioned in pre
vious sections. Social infrastructure encompasses quality education, health
care and entertainment facilities to attract entrepreneurs and professionals.
Economic infrastructure will comprise industrial parks, export processing
zones, IT/BT parks, trade centres and financial and logistic hubs.
Essential Attributes
The following will be the distinguishing features of Indian Smart Cities
ICT Enablement and Technological Intervention

High-speed internet connectivity and an online payment platform for
ious urban services such as electricity, water, property tax, gas, etc., sm
metering for the efficient measurement of water consumption, the use
techniques like SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)
reduce transmission loss, sensors to estimate water flow rates on a
time basis and leak detection, and smart grids to manage the distrib
of electricity generated by various sources including renewable ene
The use of clean technologies has been prescribed to harness rene
materials and energy sources, so as to reduce the environmental impact
urban development, and the Geographical Information System (GIS)
spatial mapping has been recommended for the formulation of Smart C
Development Plans (SCDPs).
Service-level Benchmarking (Comparable to Cities in European Countries

the Developed World)
Smart Cities should strive to attain the world-class benchmark for urba
services, such as high frequency mass transit, with a residential density
175 persons per hectare (pph), 100 per cent household access to 24x7 and
135 lpcd water supply with metered connections, sewerage, storm water
drainage and 24x7 supply of electricity. Hundred per cent efficiency in cost
recovery for water supply and sewerage has also been specified.
Private Sector-led Development

Considerable involvement of the private sector is contemplated, to facil
itate innovation and make the delivery of urban services more efficient.
Dialogues have been initiated with global management consultancy firms
such as Mackenzie, KPMG, PWC, ILFS and leading IT companies such as
IBM, CISCO and Microsoft, to involve them in the design, implementation
and real-time monitoring of Smart Cities.
Consultant-driven Planned Development

The document recommends the formulation of SCDPs and project DPRs
by urban local bodies/parastatal agencies in different states through cen
trally empanelled consultancy firms. The central engagement of agencies is
suggested to expedite the process of planning and to ensure uniform and
high quality outputs.
Greater Institutional Coordination
As the city is conceived as a 'system of systems' where multiple agencies have

been involved in planning and management, it is important that there is a
synergy among them for coordinated action. The document underscores the
need to overcome the current practice of wbrking in silos with greater insti
tutional coordination (MoUD 2014: 7).
Transit-oriented Mixed-Use Development

Inadequate access to affordable housing is conceived as a problem created
by prohibitive land prices and low floor area rations (FARs) being unable to
promote high intensity development. To address the problem, transit-ori
ented, mixed-use development with higher FAR is proposed to reduce the
commuting time, to integrate work with living and affordable housing for
people near the work centres.
Governance by Incentives rather than Governance by Enforcement

People would be encouraged to adopt right practices proactively rather
than by fear of penal action. Flexible FAR norms should be .treated as an
incentive, contrary to regulatory compliance of low and fixed FAR. All
decisions should be based on rationality and non-discrimination with the
infusion of technology and compliance to service-level agreement, with
human intervention restricted to a bare minimum level.
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Conditions for the Selection of Smart Cities

The selection of Smart Cities will be decided by compliance to several
conditions set by the state and the urban local body (ULB), such as the
existence of a notified Master Plan, a digitised and GIS-enabled base map,
online seeking and delivery of all public services, transparent and time
bound procedure (not more than seven days) for the approval of various
utility projects, and availability of all information and decisions in the pub
lic domain. All projects are to be offered first to the private sector for imple
mentation and maintenance; the tariff structure should be affordable to the
poor, but cost recovery of capital and operational expenditure should be
assured; and there will be a single regulatory body for all utility services to
ensure quality of service delivery and financial sustainability. Credit rating
by agencies empanelled by Gol, flexible land-use and FAR are considered
mandatory commitments. Recently, the government announced that cities
will be selected through a 'City Challenge Competition'. The evaluation
will give special emphasis, in the selection process, to the ratio between
revenue and population, and the ratio between revenue and the number of
government employees.
Financial Architecture
The High Power Expert Committee (HPEC) of the government estimated

the investment requirement as Rs. 7 lakh crore for a period of twenty
years, and an annual requirement of Rs 35,000 crore each for 100 Smart
Cities with an average population of 10 lakhs. With a major share of the
investment expected from the private sector, the contributions from the
central government shall be limited to Viability Gap Funding. The Gol
recently announced an investment of Rs 48,000 crore for this initiative
(The Economic Times 2015). The financing mechanism will primarily be
based on land value-based taxation, user charges, PPP, market borrowing
and debt financing of infrastructure. The instruments likely to be explored
include leveraging of land available with ULBs and parastatals, betterment
levy, Pooled Municipal Debt Obligation, Real Estate Investment Trusts,
Infrastructure Debt Funds and tax-free Municipal bonds.
Operational Procedures
The procedure for the development of Smart Cities should commence with
the formulation of a Citizen Reference Framework (CRF) to reflect the
aspirations and expectations of the residents, prepared by the empanelled
agency in consultation with the citizens and other stakeholders. This will be
followed by the formulation of SCDP, based on the Master Plan of the city,
gap analysis and CRF. SCDPs should assess the investment requirements to
bridge the gap in different aspects of infrastructure and urban livability and
indicate possible sources of funding. The initiative will be implemented by
a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) that is to be created for each city.
Indian Urbanisation Challenges and Smart City Utopia

Indian cities are grappling with multiple challenges which do not appear
to have any bearing on the Smart City agenda outlined by the government.
The following section discusses the emerging challenges of the Indian
urban scenario and the initiative's ignorance about them.
Oblivious to the JnNURM Experience

The Smart City programme was launched subsequent to the Jawaharlal
Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM), the most ambitious post-Inde
pendence urban renewal initiative to rejuvenate 65 mission cities (including
the megacities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru,
Ahmedabad and seventeen state capitals) and 640 non-mission towns
across the country during the period 2005 to 2012. The Mission aimed to
fasttrack urban development and promote reforms to ensure efficiency in
infrastructure and basic service delivery, including affordable housing for
the poor and community participation, and accountability of the ULBs or
parastatal agencies towards citizens. Several assessments by Gol (HPEC,
Grant Thornton, Arun Moira Committee, CAG) indicated limited success
of the Mission's activities in metropolitan and large cities of more urban
ised and high-growth states such as Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat and
Karnataka. Out of the total 1,093 DPRs submitted till August 2012, only 552
(51 per cent) could be sanctioned (CPR 2014). CAG indicates poor comple
tion rates of infrastructure and housing, inefficiencies of consultant-driven
project management and implementation process, diversion of funds,
irregular payments to contractors, and delay in the release of funds leading
to cost escalation and further burdens for the ULBs (CAG 2012).
The problem of land acquisition is one of the major constraints on
infrastructure development. The mid-term appraisal of Urban Development
in the Eleventh Plan (Planning Commission 2010) reported a delay in the
utilisation of funds, with twenty-five states and Union Territories using less
than 80 per cent of the allocated budget for infrastructure projects due to
the lack of ULB capacities in planning and execution of projects. The key
constraints of the Mission were: absence of participatory planning leading
to lack of ownership of the projects; absence of coordination between urban
planning, project selection and citizen's needs, resulting in the weakening
of citizen-government interface; and the absence of a need-benefit analysis,
social audit and monitoring mechanism to assess the impacts of the reforms
and projects.
The CAG (2012) reported that out of thirty-nine cities audited, only
seven could implement user charge collection for water supply and five
for solid waste management, while no state implemented rent control
reform and stamp duty rationalisation. This indicates a lack of political
will and an adverse ground reality in executing the reforms. The same
solutions and reforms prescribed for towns of all sizes did not seem to
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work for smaller towns. Available literature and citizen consultations reveal
evidences of non-inclusiveness in the process of implementation of the
Mission projects (Kundu and Samanta 2011; Mahadevia 2011; Banerjee
Guha 2009; National Consultation on JnNURM 2012). These include a
major disconnect between the vision of creating world-class infrastructure
and the livelihood of the urban poor in the CDPs, leading to their eviction
or relocation to the city peripheries in the process of implementation of
infrastructure projects like the Bus Rapid Transit System, road widening,
flyovers and river-front beautification in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bhopal
and Surat. The repeal of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act 1976
(ULCRA) (one of the mandatory reforms) led to the current situation of
the accumulation of 95-98 per cent of urban land with the top 20 per cent
of people, while less than 1 per cent lies with the urban poor in the ten
most populous cities. The draft concept-note does not refer to the expe
riences gained through the JnNURM, and the reasons for the disconnect
between the original intentions and the actual outcome after a decade of its
implementation. The Smart City initiative assumed a clean slate to imple
ment a techno-managerial spectacle for the neo-rich, which in reality is an
intensely contested space with conflicting interests of diverse stakeholders,
dysfunctional institutions, unequal power relations and diverse develop
ment trajectories adopted by different cities, based on their socio-political
dynamics, resource disposition and urban geography.
Big City Bias

India's urban scenario is lopsided, with the distribution of urban popula
tion skewed in favour of class I towns (population more than 1 lakh). The
share of the urban population in class I towns increased from 26 per cent in
1901 to 63.3 per cent in 2011, while the share of class IV, V and VI towns
decreased from 47 to 6.3 per cent during the same period. The number of
metropolitan cities increased from 1 in 1901 to 53 in 2011 (Roy 2013: 409).
Class I towns and metropolitan cities have better resource disposition and
higher efficiency of governance in comparison to smaller towns. In the
proposal for 100 Smart Cities, 44 will be in the population range of 1 to 4
million. With large-scale investment envisaged in these cities, the existing
polarisation between bigger cities and smaller towns with respect to infra
structure, governance and capital accumulation is likely to intensify further.
Exclusion of Census Towns

According to the Census of 2011, out of 7,935 towns, 3,894 (49 per cent)
are census towns (CTs) that do not have ULBs, continue to be governed by
a rural administrative structure and desperately need access to rudimentary
urban amenities. In spite of some of the CTs achieving an economy of scale
and emerging as possible locations for future investments, they still do not
satisfy the criteria for selection as Smart Cities.
Silence on Urban Poverty and the Informal Sector

Urban poverty in the country is quite evident with 26.4 per cent earning less
than 1 dollar a day (Singh 2014). IIHS (2011) indicates that a million plus
cities are home to 40 per cent of the slum population, while 80 per cent of the
urban poor live in cities with a population of less than 1 million. The extent
of informality observed in urban employment is quite high (around 70 per
cent), with a considerably low wage structure, adverse service conditions and
location outside the purview of the social safety net. The largest category of
urban employment is non-trade services, which includes large-scale infor
mal employment comprised primarily of domestic workers and rag-pickers.
The concept-note ignores the overwhelming presence of the urban informal
sector and the linkage between the formal and informal sectors.
Density Norm and Impracticable Land Acquisition

Indian cities are among the most densely populated in the world. The cur
rent population density of Mumbai is ten times that of New York. The pov
erty-stricken northeastern part of Delhi has the highest population density
in the country, which is sixteen times the average stipulated in the Master
Plan of Delhi (D'Monte 2014). Contrary to this reality, the concept-note
proposes a very low residential density of 175 pph for the Smart Cities. The
prescribed residential density of 175 pph for an average population size of
about 1 million (as indicated in the concept-note) will entail a residential
land area of 57 sq. km and a total town area of about 100 sq. km. Bulk
acquisition of land being a politically contentious issue, the prescription
of such a low density raises doubts about the implementation of such an
ambitious initiative. Adoption of the density norm without considering the
specific context may lead to encroachment into fertile agricultural land.
Disconnect of Infrastructure Deficit and Service-level Benchmarking

There is a considerable deficit in access to infrastructure in Indian cities.
The Planning Commission (2012) reported that no Indian city can boast
of 24x7 water supply and the duration of supply ranges from 1 to 6 hours.
About 94 per cent of Indian cities do not have access to even a partial sew
erage network, only 21 per cent of waste water is treated, and the collection
of solid waste in smaller cities is limited to 50 per cent. Public transport
accounts for only 22 per cent of the modal share. According to HPEC
(2011) estimates, 24 per cent of the urban population lives in slums. The
Smart City initiative proposes to achieve world-class benchmarking with
out assessing the feasibility or the incremental milestones to be achieved in
the process of transformation.
Myth of New Towns and Smart Cities

The development of satellite towns of large cities along industrial corridors
has been advocated as the prime strategy of the Smart City initiative. Since
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Independence, India has built about 225 new towns or greenfield cities as
industrial centres, new capitals or counter-magnets to decongest existing
megacities (Roy 2013: 410). Many of these new towns, although exhibited
as good practices in spatial planning, have failed to establish themselves as
inclusive and sustainable models. They accommodate less than 5 per cent of
the incremental urban growth (Sivaramakrishnan 2011: 190). Roy (2013)
observed that the satellite towns of the National Capital Region (NCR),
such as Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad, are glaring illustrations
of non-inclusiveness for not achieving housing mix of various income
strata, exclusion of informal sector, lack of public transport, absence of
women's safety and indiscriminate encroachment of natural resources.
The prime causes of failure include lack of understanding about mutual
dependence of metropolis and satellite towns, inadequacies of work centres
and social infrastructure, and ineffective land management. The Smart City
initiative places unrestrained faith in satellite towns to address urban disor
der without probing the reasons for their success or failure.
Accountability Deficit for Private Cities

The private sector is considered the driving force for the development of
Smart Cities, recent examples being Lavasa and Amanora in Maharashtra.
The Economic and Political Weekly (2010) reported the dubious land acqui
sition process and controversial environmental clearance of the Lavasa
project. Despite its lofty claim to accommodate the lower segment of the
migrant population, corporate-led development set the minimum price of
a flat at Rs 16 lakhs, which is beyond the budget of the intended lower-in
come group. The plans of Lavasa and other private cities are not open to
public scrutiny. In all likelihood, SCDPs, to be formulated by consultants,
would evade civic scrutiny, and the outcome would be resource depletion
and exclusive enclaves of the neo-rich.
TOD Instrument and Operational Deficiency

The concept-note has identified TOD as a tool to integrate transport
with land-use and create impetus for growth with high-density, compact
development, to challenge the ill-effects of urban sprawl. Despite the good
intentions of the TOD, it is spoiled due to unplanned growth as the author
ities in control of land-use do not have a realistic plan for the zones and
lands are put into incompatible use by more proactive market forces. Very
little has been done to provide parking facilities in transit stations, even in
peri-urban locations.
Governance by Incentives in Planning Vacuum

Some of the notable incentives proposed are flexible and higher FAR norms
close to the transit corridor, and the Transfer of Development Rights (TDR)
in heritage conservation areas and slum redevelopment zones. Judicious
implementation of these incentives and their monitoring depends on the

existence of detailed Master Plans. Ironically, 76 per cent of 7,935 towns
do not have Master Plans and hardly 25 per cent of the plan proposals
have actually been implemented (Roy 2015: 217). Therefore, governance
by incentive remains a fanciful promise and may result in indiscriminate
granting of higher FAR, driven by vigorous market forces without any cog
nisance of the carrying capacity of local infrastructure.
The PPP Myth in Augmentation of Infrastructure

The Smart City initiative depends enormously on the PPP mode for the
augmentation of infrastructure. However, it does not take into account the
experience of existing PPP projects. Seddon and Mahalingam (2013) observe
that projects with smaller time horizons, technologically simple, specific
output and risks shared primarily by public sector, such as bus shelters and
solid waste management, appear to be largely successful. On the other hand,
projects with uncertain revenue streams, an embedded objective of equitable
access and higher transaction cost could not achieve success. 24x7 water sup
ply schemes in Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum and Gulabarga cover only 10 pe
cent of the population, while the Nagpur scheme reported a cost over-run of
46 per cent due to delay in execution. PPP in urban roads such as the Karur
Toll Bridge and Coimbatore Bypass ran into problems due to an incorrect
estimate of demand and a controversy regarding land acquisition, whereas in
the case of the Chennai Ring Road, risk-sharing between public and private
sector became questionable. Hyderabad and Mumbai Metro Projects were
delayed due to problems in land acquisition; the Bangalore Metro began as
PPP but moved to an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC)
contract which was also the model for the Delhi Metro. The Chennai Metro
has been built as a joint venture of the central and state governments as
it could operate at a lower cost, as compared to a PPP contract. The con
cept-note sweepingly indicates PPP or complete private investment for the
augmentation of infrastructure without looking into the ground reality of
existing initiatives.
Uncertainty of Market Borrowing and Debt Finandng

The initiative places considerable faith in market borrowing and debt
financing of infrastructure. The experience on this front reveals that only
financially strong and large Municipal Corporations can access capital
markets. Notable among them are Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bengaluru,.
Chennai, Nagpur and Visakhapatnam, which raised Rs 12,884 million
through taxable bond, tax-free bond and pooled financing (Chakraborty
2014: 83). The bond proceeds were used to fund water supply, sewerage
projects and road projects. Poor balance-sheet and high transaction costs
restrict the access of most small and medium ULBs to the market, which
has been effectively dead in India since 2010. The concept-note is oblivious
Social Scientist
of the limitations of the bond market, such as hurdles of low rating, reluc
° tant investors, ambiguous regulations, and limited capacity and under
« standing of ULBs regarding market access.
3
Technological Fix and Urban Reality

Z The initiative underscores the use of sensors and digital technology to make
^ urban systems efficient, cost-effective and environmentally sustainab
Jj Sensor networks and digital cameras are expected to monitor the condition
g of drainage networks and anticipate flooding. However, since only 20 p
Z cent of the road network is served by stormwater drains, flood monitoring
^ remains in the realm of wishful thinking. RFID chips attached to rubbis
? bins are supposed to send alarms when they are close to being full, bu
^5 there is an obvious doubt about their application, considering that ther
is only 50 per cent waste collection coverage in small and medium towns
While Auto DCR (development control regulation) is being touted as a
tool to ensure an online and transparent building plan approval process,
it is unlikely to have a perceptible impact on the quality of life of ordinary
citizens in 76 per cent of our cities and towns that have grown organically
in the absence of Master Plans. The other implausibility of a technological
fix in Indian cities is that in a resource-scarce situation, allocation decisions
are predominantly influenced by patronage-based politics. Thus, despite
leaks in water lines or pressure drops perfectly located through digital
systems, the decision to prioritise intervention would be decided by loca
power relations.
Overarching Issues Confronting

Sustainability and Indusiveness
The Indian urban scenario is a conglomerate of divergent development
patterns, wide-ranging norms and conflicting priorities of multiple stake
holders, inherited from an indigenous, colonial, post-independent and
liberalised socio-political order. These layers interacted with the diversity of
physical and cultural landscape, inducing a complex heterogeneity in cities.
This is reflected in the differential access to infrastructure and opportuni
ties in various parts of megacities, the contrasting urban form and activity
patterns of cities in deserts and hills, the divergent management priorities in
historic and industrial towns and variations in resource disposition in eco
nomically vibrant and stagnant towns. The Smart City initiative, in its urge
to replicate the developed economy model, became a carrier of neo-libera
urbanism, overlooking the range of diversity in Indian cities. The following
issues are challenging the sustainability and indusiveness of the initiative.
Technocratic Approach to Governance

The obsession with monitoring and managing cities through ubiquitous
42 computing and digital devices disregards the city as a socio-political ph
nomenon. It presumes that all its attributes and problems can be measured
and monitored in real time, as technical problems having technical solu
tions. This form of governance is extremely limited in scope and fails to
capture the heterogeneity of culture, politics, policy and physical landscape
that shapes Indian cities. The deep-rooted problems of cities, manifested in
unequal access to opportunities linked to skewed power relations balanced
in favour of the elites, lead to inefficiency in resource allocation. Hence,
technological solutions determined through real-time analytics are unlikely
to address deep-rooted structural problems.
Entrepreneurial Urbanism
The explicit focus on cities as destinations of skilled professionals serving
the knowledge economy, seen as high-security enclaves of the neo-rich,
with a PPP mode of service delivery, and adopting technologies and ser
vices developed by big corporates, will lead to capital accumulation by a few
through the dispossession of others. The urge to promote entrepreneurial
urbanism is revealed in the unusual haste of the Gol in promulgating the
new Land Acquisition Ordinance (2015), stripping the farmers of the
safeguards against compulsory acquisition enshrined in the present Act
and withdrawing the regulatory barrier for FDI in real estate. Neo-liberal
ethos with market-driven solutions eludes urban poverty and occupational
informality, and will accelerate the social cleavage prevailing across cities.
Ambiguous Selection Criteria

The selection criteria do not recognise the imbalance existing in the urban
geography across different states. In tune with neo-liberal ideology and
entrepreneurial agenda, it emphasises performance in the City Challenge
Competition, the presence of a Master Plan, mandatory involvement of
the private sector, commitment to cost recovery in infrastructure projects
and per-capita revenue earning. Mostly, large cities in developed states
will satisfy these criteria. Surprisingly, the list of Smart Cities indicated by
the Finance Minister in the first budget speech includes a large number of
cities that are already funded under the JnNURM. The government has not
drawn lessons from the weakness of JnNURM, and it is imprudent to infuse
a second phase of ambitious investment in urban rejuvenation without first
conducting a regional planning exercise. This faux pas will lead to the snow
balling of regional imbalance and exclusionary urbanisation in the country.
Leapfrog Approach to Development

The urban reality in India is characterised by gradual improvement con
tributed through investment by people in shelter and household-level
infrastructure, complemented by augmentation of trunk infrastructure
by ULBs and state governments. All that the JnNURM could achieve that
was positive was a gradual transformation through implementation of
Social Scientist
infrastructure and housing projects in some of the better governed cities.

The Smart City initiative intends to reverse this trend and adopt a leap
frog approach to development. The vision of overhauling existing cities to
achieve an unattainable level of service and the development of greenfield
cities through large-scale land acquisition are unlikely to be sustained in
the context of the prevailing socio-economic structure in the country. The
one-size-fits-all approach, and the manufacturing of cities in an identical
mould by ignoring the diversity of physical landscape, culture, history and
politics, are doomed to fail.
Downgrading the Role of ULBs

The ULBs will be silent spectators as SCDPs, to be formulated by exter
nally hired consultants and SPVs, will be created for managing the cities.
The initiative belied the provisions of the 74th Constitution Amendment,
and charted a course of action that is undemocratic and unaccountable to
the citizens. The situation is analogous to the formulation of recent CDPs
under the JnNURM and previous IDSMT (Integrated Development of
Small and Medium Towns) Programme, which ignored the participation
of citizens and could not yield expected results because of the downgraded
role of elected ULBs.
Concluding Remarks and the Way Forward

Overarching issues and underlying shortcomings are the corollaries of neo
liberal urbanism and mission-mode interventions being practised in India
since the 1990s.
The ambiguous selection criteria are resulting in arbitrary choices of

cities for investment. Any such initiative needs to be taken up as an integral
component of a comprehensive urban policy. The report of the National
Commission on Urbanisation formulated during the late 1980s needs to
be re-examined and amended under the changed circumstances. The chal
lenge presently is to develop cities in conjunction with the development of
the regions. Small and medium towns, especially growing census towns,
should be treated as priority locations for investment and augmentation of
infrastructure and governance.
The obsession with the technocratic mode of governance is oblivious
to the legacy of cultural, political and ecological dimensions of wisely man
aged cities. For example, the traditional built-form and street orientation in
the old cities of Jaipur and Jaisalmer contain clues for addressing climatic
discomfort, while the colonial hill settlements of Dalhousie and Darjeeling
negotiated the difficult topography with remarkable sophistication and
finesse. The megacity of Kolkata boasts of its wetlands as sites for sew
age-fed fisheries, contributing to the natural process of waste recycling and
generation of local employment.
The leapfrog approach to development, in terms of unattainable ser
vice-level benchmarking for existing cities and bulk acquisition of land for
new towns, is a confirmed recipe for failure. The argument is further valid
for slums and informal settlements. Contrary to this, the country has had a
successful experience of community-driven projects leading to incremental
improvements in shelter and infrastructure, such as the Slum Networking
Project in Indore and Ahmedabad. The Ban Mankong (Secure Housing)
Programme in Thailand is also a model that needs to be examined.
The top-down, consultant-driven and big player-oriented initiative
would serve the political agenda of the new government, as against the basic
spirit of devolution and autonomy in urban planning by the ULBs as envis
aged in the 74th Constitution Amendment. In contrast, it is worthwhile to
mention the Kollam Development Plan in Kerala as an example of parti
cipatory spatial planning undertaken by the District Planning Committee
and involving diverse stakeholders, including the urban poor.
The Smart City initiative and the digital technologies for management
and monitoring of urban systems are being promoted by the world's largest
hardware and software companies to ensure a world-class living and work
ing experience for the emerging rich and neo-middle class. To be inclusive,
it is necessary to adopt a democratic approach to city development and
to explore the potential of connecting information technology with the
marginalised sections of society, to enhance their access to employment,
market, education, health, and help in building resilience against natural
disasters. Some of the established examples available across the globe are the
Digital Stewards Project in Redhook, Brooklyn (providing job listings and
support for recovery from hurricane Sandy); the Community Telecentre in
Africa (providing job opportunities for women); and the Random Hacks of
Kindness (RHoK) that produces open source software for disaster response.
RHoK products were used effectively during the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Bengaluru-based Babajob, a digital social network, provides information
about jobs to millions working in the informal sector. About a decade ago,
a collaboration of NGOs and women's networks prepared a slum atlas of
Pune by mapping them on a GIS platform, to bring slum communities
into the ambit of planning so that they could have a fair share of resources.
The Map Kibera Project used participatory GPS and Open Street Map to
empower communities of Kenya's largest slum to monitor and record their
experiences with state initiatives. Townsend (2013) explains the potential
of mobile phones in bringing economic and social opportunities to slum
communities in the developing world. In the Kosovo Science for Change
Project, people measure air quality, temperature, humidity and noise levels
in their communities with the help of Arduino-based smart citizen sensors,
and share the data through the internet. The communities use the infor
mation for advocacy so as to improve their circumstances by adhering to
environmental principles and ensuring the enforcement of standards.
Growing evidence suggests the possibilities of grassroots action and the
Social Scientist
sO
vision of local governments across the globe for an inclusive future, to cre
0
<N ate just and humane cities based on demand-driven, community-empow
<0
c ering, incremental and participatory principles of development. The notion
D
of prosperity and competitiveness in cities should expand beyond the con
1
z
fines of economic growth, and should strive for equitable distribution of
benefits and opportunities, securing economic well-being, social cohesion
and environmental sustainability. In the words of Jane Jacobs, 'Cities have
t
m the capability of providing something for everybody only because and only
iA
0 when they are created by everybody.'
Z
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Souvanic Roy is Professor, Department of Architecture, Town and

Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology
(IIEST), Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal.
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Smart Cities. The Guide highlights a reported increase in IOT devices by

The Purpose and Content of the Smart City Initiative and

ment in 2007. The city clusters include Dadri-Noida-Ghaziabad in Uttar

of 'public purpose'. The blueprint for the displacement of people from

)£ In India's Smart Cities, emerging technology features, namely, sensors,

^5 seeks to address the fragmented nature of service delivery across multiple

The following will be the distinguishing features of Indian Smart Cities

ICT Enablement and Technological Intervention

Service-level Benchmarking (Comparable to Cities in European Countries

Private Sector-led Development

Consultant-driven Planned Development

Greater Institutional Coordination

As the city is conceived as a 'system of systems' where multiple agencies have

Transit-oriented Mixed-Use Development

Governance by Incentives rather than Governance by Enforcement

Conditions for the Selection of Smart Cities

The High Power Expert Committee (HPEC) of the government estimated

Indian Urbanisation Challenges and Smart City Utopia

Oblivious to the JnNURM Experience

Big City Bias

Exclusion of Census Towns

Silence on Urban Poverty and the Informal Sector

Density Norm and Impracticable Land Acquisition

Disconnect of Infrastructure Deficit and Service-level Benchmarking

Myth of New Towns and Smart Cities

Accountability Deficit for Private Cities

TOD Instrument and Operational Deficiency

Governance by Incentives in Planning Vacuum

implementation of these incentives and their monitoring depends on the

The PPP Myth in Augmentation of Infrastructure

Uncertainty of Market Borrowing and Debt Finandng

Technological Fix and Urban Reality

Overarching Issues Confronting

Technocratic Approach to Governance

Ambiguous Selection Criteria

Leapfrog Approach to Development

infrastructure and housing projects in some of the better governed cities.

Downgrading the Role of ULBs

Concluding Remarks and the Way Forward

The ambiguous selection criteria are resulting in arbitrary choices of

Souvanic Roy is Professor, Department of Architecture, Town and

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